Circulation is at the heart of current media’s existence. When a media text circulates it spreads. The older model that was used by the broadcast minded companies used distribution. The singular source sent out the media to the audience. Today, the audience has a hand in the process as they share and circulate media texts. This tension between what the audience is doing now and what the media companies have done for years is what the authors explore at the beginning of the book.
Audiences have become more active in their consumption of media, and the idea of circulation incorporates a participatory role. The authors use examples such as the Susan Boyle phenomenon to show how something was popularized because of audience participation in ways that would not have been possible in the traditional channels. Yet, the media companies are having a hard time relinquishing control of material to an audience who may do things with it they didn’t intend. The twitter accounts of Mad Men characters got AMC upset because they felt views were being expressed that they didn’t authorize. Songs are being used in YouTube videos that weren’t authorized by the rights holders. Yet, these new media developments actually help media companies by spreading the content beyond the single sphere of experience that the companies create and ultimately they building a bigger audience. The media can migrate into different networked communities. Those communities have the opportunity to discuss the media in ways that relate to them specifically. The authors point to how fan communities have been major instigators in the circulation of media texts and have continued the life of it as a result. As the point out in Spreadable Media, you must make the content important across different areas. If it doesn’t spread it’s dead.
The media companies have definitely taken notice of the new audience engagement with the material and this has made them wary. They don’t necessarily know how to make this new landscape work for their traditional business models. They used to rely on the idea of stickiness, which was based getting people to come and stay at your site. This idea is still important as you want people to come to content, but through circulation and spreadability the content could make it to people through sharing that happens in networked communities. The key difference is that the material isn’t centralized in one place. Instead, it is dispersed. The authors draw on a history that shows that dispersing material, spreading material has happened for some time actually. They point to scrapbooks. Now, we have YouTube and Twitter, Dispersing through those sites butts up against the company’s notions of unauthorized activity. Today’s audience is active though. They want to have agency in the way they engage with media texts. Companies delude themselves when they think they can have the kind of control they once had. So, they must listen to the audience.
The media companies have begun to listen to the audience and this has created an unstable relationship that isn’t equitable. With the development of Web 2.0 companies began to rely on audiences for content creation. Audiences are generally happy to participate when it comes to the media they care about and have an emotional connection with, but are the companies exploiting the audience in order to get user generated content and give off the impression that they are collaborating with them? Web 2.0 ultimately erased participation even though it gave the impression that it embraced it because it valued the commodity culture as opposed to social exchange. But people may still get something out of their involvement even if it isn’t money. The social/cultural reasons that people want to generate content are a big impetus. They get attention, they create something, or they get bragging rights. Sharing generates value through mutual ties, reciprocal expectations, and social payments. Our economic minded culture may not be as dominant as it seems. People still want to engage media texts even if they aren’t getting paid. As one author points out there is pleasurable participation, but this doesn’t mean that the moral economy can be unbalanced. The audience still wants the understanding between them and the companies to be transparent and the relationship authentic.
This reading really resonated with me because I was personally involved with creating content for a website. Current TV had a viewer created content initiative and I created content for them. Initially I would create videos and put them up on the site because I wanted to be part of the community and potentially get my work shown on TV. Eventually this happened and there was some payment involved, so I didn’t feel like I was being exploited. Honestly, even if I wasn’t paid, but my work had been on TV, I would have been fine with it because I would have that sense of accomplishment. So I would have given them a gift, but they would have reciprocated it by putting my work on TV and that would have been some kind of exchange. So I do agree that audiences aren’t just blindly accepting Web 2.0 even when they engage with it. The audience is an active participate with it because they are still able to get something out of it.
Hmmm, again…strong summary format that will be useful for your evolving writing in this and other courses. In this last paragraph, you bring up a really fascinating experience that is worth digging into deeper and trying to understand more about this dynamic that CURRENT was playing around with, and whether and how this is a sustainable model (all those contests out there to create free content for companies!) for young emerging mediamakers. Yet it is so hard to earn a living as a professional. Amateurs forever? A new model?
In all your writings you have asked some really important and relevant questions. I am wondering what questions (and comments you have made to others) that you will draw upon for your midterm essay?
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